Talk:Where red is during the entire video game series/@comment-70.196.15.157-20141218184409/@comment-665531-20141221141801
I'm going to start by mentioning that I'm more familiar with the main series than with some of the spinoffs, but here's what I have gathered. Though not all Pokemon franchise games are set within a single continuity (Pokemon Puzzle League features anime characters for example), the main RPG series takes place in a roughly 20 year long period. First, the Gen 1 games take place. It appears that Yellow and the FireRed/LeafGreen games are "more canon" than the original games, since Red uses the Kanto starting trio when battled in Gold/Silver, but the basics are the same. What's funny is, this seems to occur at the same time as Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald. FR/LG feature setting up a Network Machine that allows for trading with RSE, meaning that one can trade directly between those games and FR/LG. It seems like Red's journey at least started before RSE began, simply because it takes longer to trade across regions in FR/LG than in RSE, but the games overlap in the timeline enough so that we can say they basically happened at once. Three years passed between Red becoming champion and finding him in Generation 2 as Gold/Kris/Lyra. During that time, it is implied that Red basically ran off in order to train more intensively. In other words, he's grinding. What's interesting is that the Generation 4 games (Diamond/Pearl/Platinum) make reference to the events happening in Johto. The Red Gyarados is mentioned as recent news in the beginning of the games. Considering the lenght of Gold's journey in Kanto before finally facing Red, it is reasonable to assume that Red only could have left the mountain after the events of DPP have concluded. Next, we have to note that the more recent games, Generations 5 and 6, are set in Unova and Kalos. These regions are portrayed as being more distinct and distant from the other regions than those regions were from each other. Characters from Unova and Kalos are shown as having distinct speech patterns from those in the other major regions. In the case of Unova, which had its own collection of Pokemon that had not only never appeared anywhere else, but also didn't include any Pokemon from other regions, it is reasonable to assume that the area was simply more isolated than other regions in the near past. Anyway, Pokemon Black/White takes place about a decade after Gold battles Red and Red possibly leaves the mountain. We know this because of a couple of returning characters. For example, HeartGold/SoulSilver features a Rocket grunt with a funny accent from a faraway country. In Black/White, we can find a similar person in Icirrus City, who was a former Rocket member who says he went back home to Unova after the organization fell. In that time, he quickly fell in love with his wife, seen in Black/White, and had a son, who appears to be roughly 6 to 10 years old. When Black/White occurs, there is no particular reason for Red to show up during the story. Team Plasma is only a high-level threat for a short period of time, and Unova is far away from Red's homeland. It makes sense that, within a short space of time, he was not contacted and sent to Unova to kick Plasma around a bit. Especially since long-range travel seems more difficult in the Pokemon world than in real life. Two years pass between Black/White and Black 2/White 2. That is stated pretty clearly in the games. Once again, there is no reason for Red to show up during the story*. Unova is at this point protected by its various gym leaders and Elite Four, the protagonist of the original game, AND N, who actually does help out during the story. The villains of B2/W2 had an uphill battle. Last is X/Y, set in the Kalos region. Note that Kalos, based on its Pokedex, seems to be somewhere between Unova and the other earlier regions. During this game, the bad guys are actually fairly hidden much of the time. They become a much bigger threat all at once; during much of the game, you stop Team Flare from stealing Pokeballs, sabotaging power plants, stuff like that. Even when applying real-time logic to the problem, the bad guys only show signs of trying to destroy the world and such for a very short period, possibly a few days. So once again, it is reasonable that Red doesn't show up simply because there is a fairly small window in which to do so. Short Version: *Red/Blue/Yellow takes places during Ruby/Sappphire/Emerald. *Three years pass *The Johto and Sinnoh games take place, and Red only leaves the mountain after all of that has occured *Ten years pass *Black/White happens on another continent. *Two years pass *Black/White 2 doesn't require Red's input, while X/Y happens within too short a time for him to reach that distant part of the world. *One oddity is that Red seemingly shows up in B2/W2's post-game, where one can face him in the Pokemon World Tournament. Said tournament features a number of notable opponents from previous games in the series. However, we've already established that this should take place about 12 years after facing Gold, meaning that even if Red is 10 or 11 in the original games, he should be at least 25 by now. However, his sprites are identical to those in HeartGold/SoulSilver, when he was 14. And even his sprites in Gold/Silver were very similar to the original Red/Blue sprites, though its worth noting that his appearance did change from the G1 emakes to the G2 remaes. This suggests that the kid you face in B2/W2 is not the same guy who beat Team Rocket 15 years earlier.